It may or may not surprise you to learn that the anti-corporate Adbuster quacks, who are protesting on Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, and now in cities across the United States, have garnered some support from the anti-corporate libertarians.
The following video clip will give you an idea of the caliber of economic understanding these protesters possess, and I post this clip not because I side with Adam Kokesh (I don’t), but because I myself have been astonished by the number of emails I’ve received from libertarians asking me if I “stand with” the Wall Street protesters.
Emphatically I do not.
Here are a handful of the reasons why:
If you wish to know more about these Adbuster hypocrites, who have made a lot of money with their anti-capitalist campaign, read this.
I don’t understand why a person that self-identifies as a libertarian would EVER ally with people advocating the use of force to achieve their ends. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’ve considered you, Ray, to be libertarian. I have been reading and hearing what these protesters are saying about the use of force and coercion. And I would have never have thought that a libertarian would support them in any way. So I can’t understand why you would be receiving emails of the sort you mentioned. Have those people not heard what these protesters are saying? The use of coercive force strikes at the very core of individual liberty. . .
No one has been more surprised by this than me. There is a certain narrow strain of libertarianism to which I more or less subscribe, and yet I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the word. Part of the reason for this is that the word “libertarian” has become a rubber word, stretched to mean virtually anything outside the two-party system. (Noam Chomsky, for instance, describes himself as a “civil libertarian,” and there’s very few people with whom I disagree more stridently.)
Historically, libertarianism is rooted in anarchism, and I think that’s the common ground many of the so-called anarcho-libertarians are finding with these Wall Street protesters, despite all their signs of “We hate capitalism” and so on.
One thing I’d like the anarcho-capitalists to understand about me is this: I’m not an anarchist — in part because I don’t believe anarchy is possible: whoever possesses the nuclear weapons and all the other artillery — chemical, biological, or otherwise — is, in effect, the government, whether that entity is a private defense firm or not. I do, however, agree with Thomas Paine, who wrote:
“In its best state, government is but a necessary evil. In its worst state, an intolerable one.”
Thank you for dropping by, ScummyD.
Whew….
It gives me pause being so bluntly confronted with evidence that so clearly illustrates the short-comings delivered unto us via our current system of public education.
But I can’t say that I’m shocked, and perhaps that alone is an even more grevious indictment.
I found both the interviewer and interviewee to be pompous, self-absorbed, morons.
All societies are based on force and coercion (which is just the implied threat of force). It’s what keeps the “have-nots” from switching positions with the “haves”. It’s a simple system we, as humans, learned long ago before we split off from the lower species. Ironically, it is often the technological innovation of flaking a rock into a knife edge or fashioning a branch and stone into a club that many college courses pinpoint as the first signs of advanced intelligence. Fast-forward thousands of years and some Clears sporting, trench-coat wearing knob will sadly fail at explaining why it’s an inalienable right for an entire generation to delay maturity by ensconcing themselves in some academic fantasy world for 6-8 years while the taxpayers are forced, oops, coerced into picking up the bill.
My advice, learn to flake rock buddy, the times they are a-changing.
As for the interviewer… Impeach? Seriously? Sorry your Neo-Icarian voting experiment failed but that’s no reason to impeach the man. Just vote him out next year.
That interviewer — Adam Kokesh, an Iraq-war-veteran-turned-war-protestor — recently ran as a Republican in New Mexico’s 3rd District. (He lost to Democrat Tom Miller, I believe.) My understanding is that Adam Kokesh received much money from Ron Paul’s so-called Campaign for Liberty — a fact I mention, Jeff, only to give you some idea of where he’s coming from.
Thank you for dropping by.
And Gonzo journalist Joel Barr — thank you for dropping by.
This is truly a postmodern protest movement, and as Ray has pointed out in the past, Postmodernism is the Death of Thought.
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This was taken from the “Occupy Vancouver” website, which fittingly is taking place at an art gallery(WTF?)
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WHAT IS THE GOAL? WHY ARE WE PROTESTING?
“This protest cannot be boiled down to a simple soundbite because this protest is ambitiously seeking a complex, fundamental, philosophical change in the social, political, and economic infrastructure of our country… The strength of Occupy… lies in the ambiguity of its mission. There is no laundry list of specific, unreasonable, and untenable demands. There is only the demand for change. Change of, by, and for the people, enacted by our elected officials. If the powers-that-be respond with absolutely nothing, then it is clear that they will never, ever be interested in effecting substantial change of our financial system, no matter how strong public support may be.”
– Edward Murray, Huffington Post
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Truly the blind leading the blind…
Perhaps if they all took a train over to Rutgers and protested this
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-16/rutgers-boosting-athletics-at-expense-of-academics-fails-to-emulate-texas.html
it would give them some direction.
Took a train to Rutgers — Jeff, I urge you to consider that for the title of your next book.
A very bad remake of the 60s.
Dont trusts anyone over 30
If it feels good, do it
Money is evil unless its me spending it.
Tear it all down.
We’ll worry about a replacement later
Except this time we have Aerosmith in the background chanting “eat the rich”
Yeah, honk if you’re taking out student loan debt to attend Geore Washington University in DC, one of the most expensive (if not THE most) schools in the country. That doesn’t even include the cost of living in DC which I know from growing up there is extremely expensive.
If Marie-Antoinette were alive today she would be dancing since she could say “Let them eat cake” and thousands of OWSers would line up cheering with their cake forks clutched in their hands.